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Through or Trough - What's the difference?

through | trough |

As nouns the difference between trough and through

is that trough is a long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals while through is a large slab of stone laid on a tomb.

As a verb trough

is to eat in a vulgar style, as if eating from a trough.

As a preposition through is

from one side of an opening to the other.

As an adjective through is

passing from one side of an object to the other.

As an adverb through is

from one side to the other by way of the interior.

through

English

Alternative forms

* thorow (obsolete) * thru

Etymology 1

From (etyl) *. See also thorough.

Preposition

(English prepositions)
  • From one side of an opening to the other.
  • :
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838
  • , page=13 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist) , title= Ideas coming down the track , passage=A “moving platform” scheme
  • Entering, then later leaving.
  • :
  • *
  • *:Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging.He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them.
  • *
  • *:Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-25, volume=407, issue=8837, page=74, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= No hiding place , passage=In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%.}}
  • Surrounded by (while moving).
  • :
  • *, chapter=1
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.}}
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=76, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Snakes and ladders , passage=Risk is everywhere.
  • By means of.
  • :
  • *{{quote-news, year=2011, date=September 28, author=Tom Rostance, title=Arsenal 2-1 Olympiakos
  • , work=BBC Sport citation , passage=But the home side were ahead in the eighth minute through 18-year-old Oxlade-Chamberlain.}}
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= The attack of the MOOCs , passage=Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.}}
  • (lb) To (or up to) and including, with all intermediate values.
  • :
  • Derived terms
    (terms derived using the preposition "through") * clear through * feedthrough * get through * go through * look through * right through * through and through * through with * throughput * throughway

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Passing from one side of an object to the other.
  • :
  • Finished; complete.
  • :
  • Valueless; without a future.
  • :
  • No longer interested.
  • :
  • *
  • *:“I'm through with all pawn-games,” I laughed. “Come, let us have a game of lansquenet. Either I will take a farewell fall out of you or you will have your sevenfold revenge”.
  • *1977 , Iggy Pop,
  • *:I'm worth a million in prizes / Yeah, I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk / No more beating my brains / No more beating my brains / With the liquor and drugs / With the liquor and drugs
  • Proceeding from origin to destination without delay due to change of equipment.
  • :
  • Adverb

    (-)
  • From one side to the other by way of the interior.
  • The arrow went straight through .
  • From one end to the other.
  • Others slept; he worked straight through .
    She read the letter through .
  • To the end.
  • He said he would see it through .
  • Completely.
  • Leave the yarn in the dye overnight so the color soaks through .
  • Out into the open.
  • The American army broke through at St. Lo.

    References

    * Andrea Tyler and Vyvyan Evans, "Bounded landmarks", in The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning and Cognition , Cambridge University Press, 2003, 0-521-81430 8

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A large slab of stone laid on a tomb.
  • trough

    English

    (wikipedia trough)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.
  • One of Hank's chores was to slop the pigs' trough each morning and evening.
  • Any similarly shaped container.
  • # (Australia, New Zealand) A rectangular container used for washing or rinsing clothes.
  • Ernest threw his paint brushes into a kind of trough he had fashioned from sheet metal that he kept in the sink.
  • A short, narrow canal designed to hold water until it drains or evaporates.
  • There was a small trough that the sump pump emptied into; it was filled with mosquito larvae.
  • (Canada) A gutter under the eaves of a building; an eaves trough.
  • The troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.
  • (agriculture, Australia, New Zealand) A channel for conveying water or other farm liquids (such as milk) from place to place by gravity; any ‘U’ or ‘V’ cross-sectioned irrigation channel.
  • A long, narrow depression between waves or ridges; the low portion of a wave cycle.
  • The buoy bobbed between the crests and troughs of the waves moving across the bay.
    The neurologist pointed to a troubling trough in the pattern of his brain-waves.
  • (meteorology) A linear atmospheric depression associated with a weather front.
  • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To eat in a vulgar style, as if eating from a trough
  • he troughed his way through 3 meat pies.

    References

    * Oxford English Dictionary Online

    See also

    * crib * ditch * trench